The ability to display comments alongside digital media applies to digital works such as web pages, although not limited thereto. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,801,951, assigned to Reframe-It, Inc., incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses such systems and methods. These systems and methods are discussed below with reference to the disclosed systems and methods for searching digital works for existing comments.
In one embodiment, a user may visit a web page and a web browser will open a window on one side of the computer screen focused on the web page. On the other side of the screen, another window may be opened for displaying textual, video and audio comments created by users that refer to the web page, although not limited thereto. The two windows can be coordinated such that when a user scrolls down in the web page window, the comment window will scroll to a corresponding degree so that they remain in sync.
Such a system provides the ability for users to enter comments in the comment window, which may be in reference to a particular point on the web page. User comments may be stored in a database accessible over a network. In such a way, as a user navigates web pages, available comments for those web pages will always be displayed alongside the web page content.
However, there already exists a large number of comments for web pages which are publicly available on networks such as the Internet. Although publicly available, these comments are not necessarily available to users of the comment system because they were not entered through the system's interface. In addition, these comments are spread throughout a network (e.g., Internet), such that it would be impractical to input them into the system manually. Therefore, it would be beneficial to have a superior system and method for creating large numbers of relevant, contextual marginal comments based on existing discussions of quotations and links.